F. N. Peloubet (1832–1920)

His grandfather and first American ancestor was Joseph Alexander de Chabrier de Peloubet, a French royalist officer who was exiled during the Revolution. Francis was born in New York City, but the family moved to Bloomfield, New Jersey, where most of his boyhood was spent.

Having prepared for college at the Bloomfield Academy, Francis Nathan Peloubet entered the sophomore class at Williams, where he graduated with honors in 1853. After teaching a year in Bloomfield, he entered Bangor Theological Seminary and graduated in 1857. It had been his purpose to enter the foreign mission field, in preparation for which he had spent much time in the study of the Tamil language.

Francis Nathan Peloubet was actually appointed to India. In fact, for a variety of reasons he finally decided to enter the home ministry instead, and was ordained at Lanesville, Massachussets, on December 2, 1857. His pastorates, all in Massachusetts, were at Lanesville on Cape Ann, 1857 - 1860; Oakham, 1860 - 1866; Attleboro, First Church, 1866 - 1871; Natick, 1872 - 1883. In all these communities he labored successfully to lift the social, civic, and educational ideals; during the Civil War he twice visited the front in the service of the Christian Commission. Peloubet will always rank as a pioneer in the American Sunday school movement. During his Attleboro pastorate he prepared two question books, but was unable to secure a publisher. In 1874, however, after the International Lessons had become almost universally adopted in the Protestant churches, he began a series of question books based on these lessons, which achieved immediate success and soon reached a circulation as high as 116, 000 copies a year.

In 1880 this publication became a quarterly, with an annual circulation of 150, 000 copies. After the wide-spread adoption of the International Lessons, a need arose for a practical commentary for teachers and advanced pupils on the portions of the Bible covered year by year. Accordingly, with a volume for 1875 Peloubet began his Select Notes on the International Sabbath School Lessons (Sunday was later substituted for Sabbath), which ably met that need and achieved immediate success. This publication was issued annually for forty-five years, the veteran editor bidding farewell to his public in the volume for 1921, which appeared in 1920, a few months before his death. Widely used among the Protestant churches of all names and by preachers and teachers on the mission fields, the work is estimated to have had during Peloubet's lifetime a circulation of over a million volumes. In 1883 he resigned his Natick pastorate and in 1890 established his home in Auburndale, where he spent the remainder of his life in incessant literary activity.

Francis Nathan Peloubet was a prolific contributor to the religious press, and published popular commentaries on the Gospels of Matthew and John and the Acts of the Apostles, Loom of Life, and If Christ Were a Guest in Your Home (1900), The Front Line of the Sunday School Movement (1904), Studies in the Book of Job (1906). In addition he edited Select Songs for the Singing Service in the Prayer Meeting and Sunday School (2 vols. , 1884, 1893), a revision (1903) of the Oxford University Bible Helps and a revised edition (1912) of William Smith's International Bible Dictionary, as well as Treasury of Biblical Information (1913) and Oriental Light Illuminating Bible Texts and Bible Truth (1914).

Francis Nathan Peloubet died on March 27, 1920.